A simple but effective story with good characters, great direction & cinematography and excellent fight scenes mean that BELLS OF DEATH comes close to being a 'classic', but it's let down a bit by some occasionally poor editing and mostly poor soundtrack. Most of the music is cribbed from Spaghetti Westerns, and the sound design is dominated by the hero's signature bell sound every time he moves, which threatens to ruin the film at times! There's enough great moments (including one of the best fights in a bamboo forest I've seen) that any fan of Shaws martial arts films should make the effort to see this film though.